FIELD OF THE INVENTION
The invention relates to a cable car system in which passenger carriers, such as chairs, are suspended from a suspension and traction cable; the cable is deflected about two deflection pulleys; the system further includes a conveyor device, provided at least at one of the boarding points, through which the passengers are brought to the area in which they board the passenger carriers, with an entrance gate, a central control unit for controlling the entrance gate and the conveyor device; the system also includes a signal transducer, which is trippable when a passenger carrier passes by, and a speed transducer, by which the speed of the suspension and traction cable is detectable, the output signals of the transducers being carried to the central control unit.
In prior art cable car systems of this kind, there is a need to open the entrance gate at exactly the moment at which the conveyor device has conveyed the passengers to the area where they are to board the particular passenger carrier (e.g. a lift chair) as soon as the passenger carrier arrives in that area. The conveyor device is moved at a speed that is substantially slower than that of the passenger carriers. However, since the passenger carriers are secured to the suspension and traction cable at irregular intervals, control of the entrance gate must be performed by whichever passenger carrier is to be used for carrying the passengers just then located in front of the entrance gate.
Since moreover the speed of the suspension and traction cable is not constant but instead varies depending on the technical aspects of the operation, no specific point exists at which the entrance gate must be opened by the passenger carriers entering the station, to allow the passengers to reach the boarding area at the proper time; instead, the location of this point depends on the speed of the suspension and traction cable or the speed of the passenger carriers in an area that can extend over a length of about 100 meters, for instance. The fact that the reaction time of the passengers does not depend on the speed at which the passenger carriers are moved inside the cable car station must also be taken into account.
The point at which the entrance gate must be opened upon the passing of a passenger carrier in order to allow the passengers to board may therefore be located outside the cable car station. Proper and sufficient synchronization and timing of the various operations is often not assured in the prior art systems.